A Venture Capitalist Invests in His Olympic Dream

Paul Bragiel Pauses Career to Ski For Colombia in 2014 Games

By

Geoffrey A. Fowler

Dec. 6, 2013 10:32 p.m. ET

Paul Bragiel worked for 15 years to become a Silicon Valley player. Then one morning this January, the venture capitalist woke up at a Berlin tech conference with a lingering cocktail-party buzz and this preposterous thought:

What would it take for a self-described "chunky, out-of-shape computer nerd" to make it into the Olympics?